By Dale Keiger
Photos by
Mike Ciesielski
Latent within trees, within spruce from the Alps, within
maple from the Carpathians of Eastern Europe, within
pernambuco from Brazil, there is music. Raymond Hardy, a
soft-spoken man of 71 years with thin white hair and strong
hands, picks up a piece of spruce he has carved into the
familiar shape of a viola's body. This piece will form the
top of the instrument. The carved wood has nodal points,
places where it does not vibrate. With the forefinger and
thumb of his left hand, Hardy holds the piece by one of
these points and with a finger of his right hand, taps
spots near the middle of the plate. He hears an interval, a
minor ninth. "It has a lot of sound," he says of the wood,
as he brings it close to his ear. "It continues to
ring."

Far right: Hardy carves a viola top, pausing from time to time
to check its resonance by tapping on it.

Hardy is a luthier who handcrafts violins, violas, and
cellos. A 1955 graduate of the
Peabody
Conservatory, he has been a music teacher in publicc
schools and a working musician. Since 1984, he has carved,
assembled, repaired, and sold instruments full time from a
workshop in his house in Catonsville, Maryland. The
principal cellist of the National Symphony Orchestra in
Washington, D.C., who happens to be Hardy's eldest son,
David, plays a Hardy cello, as do other cellists in the NSO
and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Charles Wetherbee,
concertmaster of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra in Ohio,
plays a Hardy violin. All of Hardy's instruments are made
on commission, for professional musicians and music
teachers and conservatory students. A typical cello from
his shop sells for $20,000. Hardy resists questions about
what his instruments cost. He'd prefer to talk about
getting music from wood.

Outside, clouds drift away from the early February
sun. As light floods the room, Hardy says, "It's a much
stronger light than you can get with any incandescent lamp.
I should take advantage of this." He stops talking,
positions the viola top in the sunlight, picks up a scraper
fashioned from a piece of steel about the size of a
commemorative postage stamp, and pulls it toward him across
the concave surface of the wood. Tiny shavings curl along
the burled edge of the scraper. Hardy is refining the
arched top of the proto viola, making it more pleasing to
his eye. The angle of the light streaming through the
window helps him gauge the symmetry of the arch's curve.
"The controlling thing is the eye," he says. "Great tool."
He scrapes more tiny curls of spruce, then blows them off
and slides his fingertips over the wood. Hardy does this
frequently, sometimes to judge his progress, sometimes, it
seems, for the tactile pleasure.

Hardy's workshop has some modern technology, but the
fundamentals of making a violin or cello have changed little in
the 400 years since their invention.

He picks up a tray that bears an assortment of planes,
similar to the familiar carpenter's tool, only made of
brass and much smaller. There are 10 of them on the tray,
assorted sizes, the smallest not much wider than one of
Hardy's fingers. "It's amazing how many little things you
need." He takes a graduation caliper and checks the
thickness of the viola top in a few spots. In one place the
spruce remains too thick, so Hardy begins peeling off
bigger curls of wood with one of the planes. The top has
been fashioned from two pieces of wood glued together, and
the grain does not align perfectly. Hardy must take this
into account as he carves. He sets down the plane and with
both hands carefully flexes the wood. "The pitch has
probably changed," he says, tapping it again. He hears a
chord. "We now have something that Pope Gregory outlawed as
the device of the devil — the augmented fourth."

Hardy uses heat to bend the viola's ribs.

Pope Gregory I codified liturgical singing in the
sixth century — hence Gregorian chant. As part of
that codification, he forbade use of an augmented fourth, a
dissonant, unresolved harmony that became known as
diabolis in musica. Hardy seems to enjoy relating
bits of historical knowledge like this. As he again takes
up a scraper, he says, "Stradivarius, instead of metal like
this, may have used pieces of swords." He can talk about
the evolution of the violin bow, and the different
traditions of violin making in northern and southern
Germany, and the history of hide glue. He has studied
antique instruments at the Smithsonian, the Library of
Congress, and the National Music Museum, the "Shrine to
Music" in Vermillion, South Dakota. He pulls out the
catalogs of various exhibitions, displaying pictures of the
work of the master luthiers of the 17th century who set the
standard for craftsmanship and the sound of the
instrument.

Hardy's workshop has some modern technology: a band
saw, a portable stereo, an electric bending iron, lamps for
when the sunlight is insufficient, several pairs of
bifocals to assist his eyes. But the fundamentals of making
a violin or cello have changed little in the 400 years
since their invention. The back, neck, and ribs — the
curved strips of wood that form the sides of the
instrument's body — are fashioned from maple. Hardy
likes maple cut from forests in Romania, around the
Carpathian Mountains, because of its even grain and the
lovely parallel curves in the grain known as "flame." For
the instrument's top, he works with spruce, usually from
the Alps. It is said that an expert cutter can determine
the sound quality of the wood by rapping on the tree's
trunk with a hatchet. That may not be true, but it's a
lovely idea.

All the wood has been carefully air-dried, often for
decades. Hardy has visited the barns of specialty-wood
dealers in Germany and Italy, barns full of wood harvested
by the ancestors of the present-day proprietors. He likens
a violin maker looking at wood to a knitter perusing yarn.
"You see a piece and think, I must have that, and
you buy it." Wood for a single cello can cost a few
thousand dollars. Hardy has pieces stashed all over his
workshop.

Hardy can make a violin in two or three weeks. He does not
care to rush. "It's preferable to allow time to be poetic," he
says. He associates the word "poetic" with great care and
attention to nuance.

The top and back of a violin, viola, or cello most
commonly consist of two wedge-shaped boards glued together
along their thickest edges. The result is a single
elongated piece of wood, flat on one side and shaped like a
peaked roof on the other. Hardy cuts the wood in the
familiar outline of the instrument's body, then begins the
slow, meditative process of hollowing it out, carving the
arched contours of the top and back with gouges, planes,
and scrapers. The resultant shape, like a building's
ceiling vault, distributes force, so that the wood can be
planed thin enough to resonate but retain enough strength
to resist the tension exerted by the strings. Hardy carves
for a while, gently flexes the piece with his hands, holds
it up to the light, then carves some more. Over days the
piece comes more and more to resemble a musical instrument.
Hardy can make a violin in two or three weeks. He does not
care to rush. "It's preferable to allow time to be poetic,"
he says. He associates the word "poetic" with great care
and attention to nuance.

At some point he will bend thin strips of maple to
form the instrument's ribs and glue to them the finished
top and back. He glues the instrument's hand-carved neck to
the body. At the end of the neck is the scroll, the
ornamental flourish around the peg box, and carving it is
one of Hardy's favorite parts of the process because it's
most like creating sculpture. Once, when he was buying wood
in northern Germany, he saw a machine that could carve
eight or nine scrolls at a time. "It was like a key machine
at Wal-Mart."

Far right: Carving an instrument's scroll is one of
Hardy's favorite parts of the process because it is most
like creating sculpture.

Later he will cut the f-holes in the top, varnish the
instrument, add purfling (thin strips of wood that
reinforce the edges of the viola's body), position a sound
post inside it (the sound post strengthens the instrument
and, more importantly, transmits vibration from the top to
the back), and add the strings. He enjoys his work. He
says, "It must relate to the fact that I liked to make dog
houses when I was a kid."

It was an uncle of his, a farmer, who most interested
Hardy in wood working. Young Ray did, indeed, make dog
houses, including an insulated dwelling for a neighbor's
pooch. In the early 1950s he earned a bachelor's degree in
music education from Peabody, married a violin student
named Irene James, and began teaching in the Howard County
school system in Maryland. He and Irene (Peabody '57)
raised three sons — the aforementioned David (Peabody
'80); Andrew (Peabody '82), a violin soloist who lives in
Brussels, Belgium; and Scott, a cellist with an orchestra
in La Coruna, Spain. To help pay for the boys' music
lessons, Hardy performed in pit bands at Baltimore's
Mechanic Theatre and played jazz piano on weekend gigs.

One day, he brought home a book on violin making. "One
thing leads to another," he says. "If you can play a
stringed instrument, you think maybe you could make one."
How did his first attempt turn out? "You know, I still
haven't finished it. I bet it's still around here
somewhere."

In the 1970s, Hardy began a serious study of
instrument making, first at Hofstra with a luthier named
John Rossi, then with Karl Roy, director of the Violin
Craftsmanship Institute at the University of New Hampshire,
who had learned at the renowned Berufsfachschule für
Geigenbau in Mittenwald, Germany. In 1984, Hardy retired
from 29 years of teaching and began crafting instruments
full time.

"The Hardy violin is even, responsive, and dependable," says
Charles Wetherbee. "There are no stronger or weaker spots, but
the violin is powerful throughout."

He has a number of projects in his shop on any given day.
Mid-morning on a Thursday finds him rehairing a violin bow.
He takes 5.5 grams of white horse hair, about 120 long
strands, and ties one end of the bunched hair with thread.
The hair comes from horses in Mongolia or China, sometimes
Siberia. Clamped on Hardy's bench is the bow stick, a long,
rounded, reflexively curved piece of pernambuco, a lovely
reddish wood from Pernambuco, Brazil. He forms a cap at the
end of the hair with glue. He will insert the ends into
small mortises in the end of the stick and the bow's handle
(called the frog) and lock them with tiny wooden wedges.

His workshop is a craftsman's jumble. Suspended from
the ceiling along one wall are 14 violins and four violas,
many made in China. Hardy augments his income from luthiery
by selling these less expensive instruments, mostly to
students. There are work benches on each end of the small
room and an island in the middle where he can work on jobs
that require more space, like varnishing a cello or bending
strips of willow to form the linings that, glued to the
ribs, provide more surface for the top and back to
adhere.

One of Hardy's violin bows, fashioned from
pernambuco wood and the hair of white horses.

Musicians bring him instruments for other sorts of
modification. One morning, he opens a case and removes a
viola. The owner, a woman, wants him to make its overly
thick neck thinner, better for her smaller hands. He
unstrings the instrument and carries it to his bench, where
he holds it in place by propping it between his belly and
the front edge of the bench. He selects a knife and with a
sure stroke pulls it along the underside of the neck,
carving off a piece. There's something startling about
this, because the viola is otherwise intact, and the cut, a
slice of unvarnished wood stark against the dark varnished
instrument, looks so much like vandalism. Hardy slices off
another piece, bringing it closer to the desired shape.

Asked about painful lessons acquired as one learns the
trade, Hardy smiles and demonstrates the wrong place to
leave one's thumb when using a sharp implement to carve a
viola's neck. His hands don't bear much in the way of
scars. He holds them up, laughs, and says, "As a musician
..." Meaning, to play, he needs intact fingers free of scar
tissue. He preserves his digits, and crafts a fine
instrument, by paying attention. Now and then he listens to
music while he works, but sometimes an audio book is better
because he tends to get too caught up in music and loses
focus on what his hands are up to.

Hardy is proud that when Charles Wetherbee of the
Columbus Symphony wanted to buy a new violin, he auditioned
several instruments by playing them before groups of his
peers. They voted for a Hardy over instruments valued in
the six figures. Wetherbee says, "The Hardy violin is even,
responsive, and dependable. There are no stronger or weaker
spots, but the violin is powerful throughout. I like most
the fact that I can play with confidence in any position,
any dynamic."

Once Hardy finishes the viola he's making, he wants to
make four new violins. "I'm not very good at managing time.
I'll estimate how long it takes to get an instrument done
for someone, and then it takes much longer." He slides his
fingertips over the top of the viola, then with a plane
takes off a little more wood. He holds the top up to the
light, then taps it. And smiles. "That's a very light tap
and a very big sound."